An International Professional Development Collaboration: Supporting Teachers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through an Immer- sion Program in the United States

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) recently initiated multiple, one-year, school immersion programs to help 25,000 KSA teachers better support KSA students and the KSA education system after spending time abroad in teacher education programs throughout the United States (US). This study explored the effects of one such program, aimed at helping KSA teachers become agents of change. The authors examined how the 46 KSA teachers involved in this program changed. Survey-research and English language tests were used to show that the immersion program yielded its desired effects: the program increased teachers’ sense of efficacy; improved teachers’ pedagogical, content, technical, and English language skills; and enhanced teachers’ understandings of education across nations and cultures, with emphasis on the transfer of features of the US educational system back to the KSA (although teachers were uncertain about the extent to which the transference desired might actually occur). Via supplemental interviews, the authors also identified self-reported influential sources of change. The article examines how these sources of change impacted KSA teachers’ mindsets regarding their teaching. The study confirms that the program influenced participants through their school immersion experiences, given that the program offered KSA teachers chances to learn more about student-centered learning approaches and more customized and individualized care for students. صخلملا ةكلم ا ب ط د نم نكمتلا ع يدوعس عم فلأ ٢٥٠٠٠ ةدعاسم لجأ نم ددعتم ردم جامدنا ا ً ارخؤم ةيدوعسلا ةيب رعلا ةكلم ا تقلطأ إ ةساردلا هذه فد و .ةيكي رم ا ةدحت ا ت ولا ءا أ فلت سرد ا لعت ةدد ةينمز ة فل م اضق دعب ،لضفأ شب يلعتلا ا اظنو نوثحابلا ماق ثيح . يلعتلا لا ا يغتلا ةداق اوحبصي ن ةيدوعسلا ةيب رعلا ةكلم ا عم ةدعاسم لجأ نم ممص ا ا لا هذه دحأ ر آ فاشكتسا نأ تابثإ لجأ نم ةي ل ا ةغللا تارابتخاو ةنابتسا مادختسا و . لا اذه اوكراش ً دوعس ً اسردم ٤٦ ـل لصح يذلا غتلا ىدم ةساردب How to cite this article: Gong, B., Collins, C., & Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2022). An international professional development collaboration: Supporting teachers in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia through an immersion program in the United States. Gulf Education and Social Policy Review, 2(2), 115–143. https://doi.org/10.18502/gespr.v2i1.10045 Page 115 Corresponding Author: Amrein-Beardsley; email: audrey.beardsley@asu.edu Submitted: February 25, 2021 Accepted: September 1, 2021 Published: January 31, 2022 Production and Hosting by Knowledge E Byoung-gyu Gong et al.. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. Managing Editor: Natasha Mansur Gulf Education and Social Policy Review Byoung-gyu Gong et al. تارا و ةيوب لا تاراه ا نم نسّح ، ع ا ىدل ةءافكلا سح نم داز لا نأ اتنلا تر أو .هنم ةوجر ا تا ثأتلا ققح دق جامدن ا ماظنلا تا م لقن ع ك لا عم ،تافاقثلاو لودلا ع لعتلل ع ا م زعت اسو .م دل ةي ل ا ةغللا تارا و ،ةينقتلا تاراه او ،ىوت ا لقن هيف ثد نأ نك يذلا ىد ا نم دك أتم اونوكي ع ا نأ نم رلا ع) ىرخأ ةرم ةيدوعسلا ةيب رعلا ةكلم ا إ ي رم ا يلعتلا ا ع غ ب ا لا ة ؤ ا يغتلا رداصم ديدحتب ً اضيأ نوثحابلا ماق ،ةيلي تلا ت باق ا ل خ نمو .( ً ايلعف بولط ا شل يلعتلا ماظنلا تا م ،ةيكي رم ا سراد ا جامدن ا م ب ر ل خ نم كراش ا ع أ لا نأ ةساردلا دكؤتو .ةساردلا كراش ا ع ا لبق نم اذ شب ةياعرلا لوح تامولع ا نم دي ز او ،بلاطلا ع زكتر ا عتلا ج م نع دي ز ا او عتي نأ ةيدوعسلا ةيب رعلا ةكلم ا ع ح أ لا نأ إ رظنل .ةبلطلل ةيدرفلا ةياعرلاو بلطلا بسح


Introduction
As globalization in educational reform advances, it has become common practice for more government officials and educational practitioners to seek, in order to transfer, educational reform ideas from foreign nations. While such international collaborations are not new to education, including teacher education (Freeman, 1993(Freeman, , 2009 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is one such case wherein dramatic restructuring of the entire nation and its society is at work, especially as the KSA simultaneously Qatar, and Jordan (OECD, 2019). Accordingly, the KSA government wanted to revamp its education system so that they might better secure a skilled workforce for KSA's future, given its increasingly diversified economy. One key reform involved the KSA Ministry of Education (MoE)'s decision to fund and provide intensive, one-year study-abroad professional development programs for its teachers, whereby the MoE set out to send at least 25,000 selected KSA teachers abroad until the year 2030 (Estimo, 2015).
While certainly unique, large, expensive, and intensive, the goal of the KSA MoE program is to raise teacher capacity within and throughout the KSA, which is to also help contribute to the overall reform of the KSA educational system. Specific objectives of the program are to better prepare KSA teachers, who are collectively focused on developing values, knowledge, skills, and attitudes of KSA children, all in support of a more diverse economy, and a more prosperous and flourishing future for KSA. Moreover, the MoE of the KSA expects to develop teachers into agents of change who will subsequently lead educational innovations and transformations throughout the KSA.

Study context
One of the universities the KSA is currently collaborating with to meet the aforementioned goals and objectives is a large, research-intensive university located in the southwest United States (US). The college of education within this university received a grant funded by the KSA MoE for the study-abroad, professional development program.
The basic design of this program was to provide one year of teacher training and field immersion for K-12 teachers from the KSA within local school districts around the university's greater metropolitan area. Training was to primarily focus on English language learning, as necessary for the immersion experiences, and the development of content, pedagogical, and technical knowledge and skills, via guided immersion and program courses.
For the English learning component, KSA teachers participated in intensive English language learning courses which covered reading, writing, listening, and speaking. To further participants' content, pedagogical, and technical knowledge and skills development, teachers took courses within the college as pertinent to developing teaching methods, practices, and pedagogies, as well as content knowledge. Teacher participants also engaged in special workshops and conferences to enhance their technological capacities, increase their leadership capacities as change makers, and learn about the US education system, to hopefully transfer best practices pertaining to social inclusion, social justice, and the like back to the KSA.

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Byoung-gyu Gong et al.
Finally, the guided immersion component included field work within K-12 classrooms and a one-to-one mentoring program with educational leaders which offered teachers a chance to reflect upon their educational experiences and practices. Teachers' actual immersion experiences transpired for approximately seven months, starting after an initial set of English language learning and pedagogical trainings. For the latter twoto-three months of this time, teachers spent 30 hr/week and 7.5 hr/day from Monday to Thursday at each of their assigned schools for their full immersion experiences.
Every participant was placed into a classroom, as matched with a teacher, and mentor (e.g., in that the teacher mentor was to support each KSA teacher via observation, dialogue, professional advice) by subject area(s) and grade level(s) taught, as per KSA participants' corresponding roles in their KSA schools. In addition, the KSA teachers had multiple opportunities to teach students in person; however, their experience and time commitments did vary depending on their partnering teachers and schools in which they were placed. Moreover, KSA participating teachers' experiences were also facilitated by educational experts including professors from the college of education, wherein KSA teachers received most of their pedagogical training.

Purpose
In this study, we collaborated with program leaders to capture and assess the intended and unintended effects of this program. More specifically, we evaluated the program impact as an independent external evaluation team. The goal was to, as aligned with the more detailed outcomes of the program, examine KSA teacher participants' changes in: (1) teacher efficacy; (2) program-specific outcomes including, for example, classroom management skills, content-specific knowledge, pedagogic skills, and English language pedagogies and skills; and (3) cross-national educational understandings, defined as elements of any foreign education system that can be both understood and mobilized to help enhance educational system in one's home country (Phillips, 2006). More specifically of focus here were KSA participants' views and understandings of both nations' educational philosophies, typical school cultures, educational policies, curricula, and pedagogical techniques. Increased understandings in these areas were to ultimately help mobilize this knowledge and transfer back to KSA the skills learned, after teachers returned to the KSA. We assessed each of these areas of interest to determine whether the expected outcomes noted were achieved via this study-abroad program.
In addition, we tried to capture KSA teachers' (4) sense making and understandings of KSA's goals for this global approach to education reform; (5) critical incidents, including memorable events realized throughout the program; and (6) future plans including, for example, KSA teachers' plans for transferring and applying learnings back in the KSA.
Congruently, the following five research questions guided this study: How did participating in the program: (1) impact KSA teachers' levels of teacher efficacy?
(2) influence KSA teachers' technical competencies as related to program-specific outcomes, including in KSA teachers' English proficiency and by subject area taught?
(3) influence KSA teachers' cross-national educational understandings and mobilization of knowledge and transferability of skills learned?
In addition, albeit not as explicitly anticipated by the KSA MoE, the study also examined (4) What KSA teachers' most memorable events/moments (i.e., critical incidents) were in terms of their professional development while immersed in the US? This study generally defined this program as a study-abroad, immersive, professional development program designed for teachers whose home nation is undergoing significant and widespread governmental transitions and economic transformations. We defined the specific components of the program and desired effects alongside the key outcomes (as detailed via research questions (1)-(3) above). Figure 1 indicates the overall theoretical framework and its relevant research questions (1)-(3). It is important to note again that research questions (4) and (5) were supplementary, or rather, not of specific interest to anyone beside us and leaders of the college of education where the program and study took place.
For teacher efficacy, an instrument aligned with Tschannen-Moran's and Hoy's (2001) instrument was used, in order to, overall and by subconstruct as related to teacher efficacy, help measure this particular program's effects.
On the other hand, the program-specific outcomes suggested by the KSA provided us with another framework or lens to work with. More specifically, the KSA government provided very detailed program outcomes to which program developers aligned all facets of this program and to which we aligned the research questions.     (Kaszuba, 2018). Consequently, there is much room to explore, in order to better understand the impact of immersive study-abroad professional development programs for teachers and on teachers.
Teacher efficacy is a critical measure explaining the level of teacher's competency or impact of teachers' education and training. Teacher efficacy is a concept derived from the notion of self-efficacy, as conceptualized by Bandura (1977Bandura ( , 1982, who argued that human knowledge and recognition is not necessarily translated into human action but mediated through self-referent thoughts about one's own capabilities or, rather, perceptions of their capabilities defined as efficacy (Bandura, 1982). In teacher education, teacher efficacy has been understood as a critical predictor of action that

Methodology
We used a program-oriented approach to conduct this study, which means that we aligned the study's objectives and outcomes as written by the grant program's sponsor (i.e., the KSA MoE) to their research questions, as well as study design (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011). In addition to assessing official program objectives, we assessed which program component(s) were most memorable and influential, as per the self-reported responses of the KSA teacher participants involved, to also get feedback on the overall program and its design. These additional interests afforded a more practical and participatory approach, whereas the elements of the study were designed collaboratively between us, college leaders, and KSA leaders, to ultimately improve programming and understand the multiple realities experienced by KSA teacher participants throughout this immersion program (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011).
The evidence of change in the above domains was collected using three different sets of mixed methods: pre-and post-surveys, pre-and post-English tests, and selective in-depth interviews.

Method
With intention to capture the effect of the program's intervention, we adopted a onegroup, pretest-posttest design, which is a quasi-experimental design method (i.e., given there were no comparison groups that we could compare KSA participants' impacts with).

Sample
In total, 46 KSA teacher participants were selected as a sample for this study, which represented the entire population of those involved in this program. The sample population included 27 (59%) English subject area teachers and 19 (41%) non-English subject area teachers. The response rate for the pre-survey was 91% (42/46), and the response rate for the post-survey was 87% (40/46), which is well over the response rate (e.g., 70%) needed to yield valid findings (Nunnally, 1978;Nulty, 2008).

Instrument
Two survey instruments were used, different only by language of the KSA participants (i.e., non-English and English subject areas), each with three different sections pertaining to KSA teacher participants' levels of (1) teacher efficacy, (2) program-specific outcomes, and (3) cross-national understandings of education. The instruments included 58 Likert-type items with scales ranging from "a great deal" = 5 to "not at all" = 1, "strongly agree" = 6 to "strongly disagree" = 1, and "yes" = 3, "unsure" = 2, and "no" = 1.
The surveys were constructed, piloted, revised, and then distributed using the electronic software, Qualtrics (2019), following which the same surveys were used on the pretest and post-test occasions (i.e., when KSA participants entered the immersion program and upon their completion). Please see the survey instruments listed in Appendix A (for non-English subject area teachers) and Appendix B (for English subject area teachers).

Data analysis
After the post-survey administration, the internal reliability of the survey instrument was assessed by construct and overall using Cronbach Alpha tests (Cronbach, 1951; Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). The goal here was to ensure that levels of internal integrity or consistency existed amongst the components within the same constructs and overall, within this survey instrument. Construct-or overall-alphas should exceed 0.7, as per Tavakol and Dennick (2011) to guarantee that both survey instruments are functioning as designed and intended. All by-construct and overall alpha levels met this threshold. Table 1 presents alpha levels by construct and overall.
Further, we measured the degree of change in participants' responses, again, on the same survey instrument, from the pre-to post-tests occasion. More specifically, we analyzed participants' pre-and post-tests responses by item, per section of the survey, as illustrated in Table 2, and overall, using t-tests in order to assess the extent to which  We also calculated effect sizes, using Cohen's d (Cohen, 1988(Cohen, , 1992, in order to quantify the practical difference, or pragmatic change between the pre-and post-tests on the same indicators. In social science research, Cohen suggested that if d = 0, the practical significance of any difference be considered "trivial," and that a d = 0.2 be considered a "small" effect size; d = 0.5 a "medium" effect size; d = 0.8 a "large" effect size; and anything over d = 1.0 as a "very large" effect size.

Method
We were also interested in finding the effects of the program intervention on the improvement of KSA participants' English skills. Thus, another one-group pre-posttest

Sampling
All 46 participants took the pre-English test, and 45 participants took the post-test, yielding one less participant from the pre-to posttest occasions (i.e., 2% attrition).

Instrument
The English tests were created and administered by ASU Global Launch, which is the university's platform that provides (among many services) language training for international students. where d = the mean score of post-test -the mean score of pre-test.

Data analysis
Effect sizes were also calculated again, and as described prior.

Method
Interviews with the KSA participants were conducted to examine, more in-depth and as aligned with research questions (4) and (5), participants' (4) critical incidents, including memorable events in the program, and (5) future plans as an indicator of program impact.
Put differently, we identified which program components were perceived as influential by participants and why, following which participants' future plans were recognized and the values, ideas, practices, and knowledge that might be registered and then transferred back to the KSA were extracted.

Sampling
The study used a convenience sampling process (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016;Stake & Trumbull, 1982), ultimately selecting five interviewees who were available during the study period, and who were also comfortable with their English proficiency given all interviews were conducted in English. Because the interviewee sample size was too small to represent the view of the entire population of KSA participants, the goal of this part of the study was not to generalize.

Instrument
The interview protocol included a total of five interview questions organized, again, under constructs pertinent to the study's last two research questions: (4) critical incidents, including memorable events in the program, and (5)  Researchers recorded the interviews for transcription purposes (see Appendix C for the interview protocol).

Data analysis
The interview data were categorized across the five participants into each of the given question topics. Data were coded in order to create thematic nodes, which represented specific common themes that were used to bind multiple statements together (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Thereafter, the NVivo 12 software was used to create certain thematic nodes.

Pre-and Post-survey
KSA teacher participants' self-reported levels of efficacy increased from pre-to postsurvey for both the English language subject area teachers and non-English language subject area teachers. While, in the end, the non-English language subject area teachers rated their confidence slightly higher than the English language subject area teachers, the observed changes of the English language subject area teachers' self-efficacy were both statistically significant (meaning that the results were not due to chance) and  Table 2).
KSA teacher participants also reported an increase in the recognition of the importance of their technical competencies from the pre-to post-survey, with the average response from KSA teacher participants falling between "agree" and "strongly agree." This indicated that this group of program participants recognized the importance of and were relatively more cognizant over time of the importance of the technical competencies built into this immersion program. In this case, however, neither of the observed mean differences observed were statistically significant, and both sets of subject area teachers yielded "trivial" effect sizes over time (e.g., d = 0.10 and 0.20, respectively; see also Table 3).
In terms of KSA participants' reported levels of self-confidence, as related to the same set of technical competencies, again, only KSA teacher participants who taught English reported an increase in said self-confidence. Neither of these differences were statistically significant, and the reported growth in self-confidence among English subject teachers was moderate in effect (d = 0.50). Inversely, KSA teacher participants who taught a subject area other than English reported a decline in their self-confidence in this area. While this decline was also not statistically significant, the effect size was negative, albeit "trivial" (d = -0.11; see also Table 3).
While both English and non-English subject area teachers reported that they were mostly familiar with instructional theories and methods used to support their technical competencies, the non-English subject area teachers reported that they were slightly more knowledgeable in the end (see Table 5). Likewise, the increase observed among non-English subject area teachers were both statistically and practically significant (d = 0.50; "moderate"). hereof note, both groups of KSA teacher participants reported  KSA teacher participants also reported an increase in their understandings of the US education system, as well as in their potential mobilization of knowledge and transferability of skills learned. More specifically, English subject area teachers yielded a statistically significant increase in their cross-national understanding of the US education system, also yielding a "very large" effect size (d = 1.07). Put differently, for the English subject area teachers, the immersion program apparently provided a very clear increase in their cross-national understandings of education. Non-English subject area teachers were, however, more likely to agree that they understood the US education system before and after the immersion experience (see Table 5), however the increase they posted were not statistically significant and not as practically significant (d = 0.64; "moderate") as the English subject area teachers.
In terms of KSA participants' perceptions of their mobilization of knowledge and transferability of skills, no change was reported in the perceptions among both the English and non-English subject area teachers. Indeed, non-English subject area teachers were slightly less likely to report increased beliefs in their abilities or capacities to mobilize or transfer skills from the US to KSA at the completion of the program. However, none of these results were statistically or practically significant (d = 0 and d = -0.24; see Table   5).  Table 6). This finding was, more or less, commensurate with the by-construct findings noted earlier; that is, while all KSA teacher participants seemed to gain in their desired outcomes over time, overall, the program interventions worked slightly better for the English subject area teachers versus the non-English subject area teachers as per KSA teacher participants' self-reported (1) levels of teacher efficacy, (2) program-specific outcomes, and (3) crossnational understandings of education for KSA teacher participants (see Table 6). While, again, English language teachers had higher overall scores, this potentially indicates that English proficiency may have impacted participants' immersion experiences. Put differently, the extent to which participants knew and understood English seems to have had an impact on the effects experienced by KSA participants throughout this program; although, we did not examine the extent to which varying and changing levels of English proficiency were correlated with or caused the differentiated gains noted. This was only noted as an important consideration here, also given obvious implications for others considering similar program upon which English proficiency relies. The primary language of instruction and use throughout any immersion setting or program matters.

English test
Strong evidence that the English language instruction provided by [name of organization removed for peer review] improved KSA teacher participants' English language proficiency, again, as measured and assessed through listening and reading (including grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension) and speaking (including grammar, syntax, usage and picture identification) was observed. Each of the elements assessed via the English test was seen to have a practical significance with trivial effect sizes (e.g., d = 0.27-0.48; see Table 7).
As illustrated in Table 7, researchers observed statistically significant increases on all scores as measured from pre-to post-English assessments at a significance level of p < 0.05. More specifically, this means that KSA teacher participants answered almost four more questions correctly on the post-assessment than they did on the pre-assessment. They added 2.5 more words to their narrative writing, asked about one more question during dialogic conversations, and their post reading and writing scores increased by six and seven points, respectively, from their pre-to postassessments.

Critical incidents
Researchers' coding of KSA participants' interview transcripts yielded three unique topics related to the critical experiences. Table 9 illustrates the distribution of coding across four topics and five teacher interviewees.
Four of the five KSA teacher interviewees selected their school immersion experiences as the most memorable experiences during the program period. One of the   Table 9 Critical incident The interviewees also chose to discuss different aspects of that which they observed in practice as valuable during their school immersion experiences. These esteemed experiences were noted, also in no particular order, as centered around customized learning, the uses of new educational technologies, the school culture and interpersonal interactions at the teacher-teacher, teacher-student, and student-student levels that participants observed, the varieties of teaching and pragmatic skills learned, and the variety of special programs (e.g., special education, gifted, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM]) offered by schools to which so many students had access.
Participants noted that their learning about US education culture and practice happened outside of their systemic program experiences, as well. One of the interviewees

Future plans
When asked about the participants' future plans when they went back to KSA, given their understanding of the country's current education reform as well as their learning and immersion experiences in the US, the five teacher interviewees produced two different thematic codes as illustrated in Table 10.
First, four of the five interviewees mentioned that they would adopt student-centered learning aspects. They wanted to try more to respect each student as an individual, having different characteristics and learning styles and preferences, while reducing students' workloads and pressures for learning. As an effort to promote the studentcentered learning environment, they planned to focus on improving relationships with their students once back in the KSA. One of them added: I know when I go back to my school, I will be closer to my students. I will not treat them the way I used to.
They also added that building close relationships was the basic step to provide better education for the students, saying: When I have … [a] close relationship with my students, I will be more caring about the students, I will be more caring about their education.
In addition to building or strengthening relationships, two interviewees also said they would try to provide more customized learning for their students using differentiation tactics.
Secondly, three out of five interviewees mentioned that they would like to bring advanced pedagogic and teaching skills to advance KSA's educational quality. One of the interviewees said that they wanted to change the whole education culture in the KSA by using motivation theories learned during the program. Another interviewee wanted to use a variety of pedagogic tools and techniques that could better support improved learning for students, stating: Clearly, and at least as per these interview data, the experiences and knowledge valued most pertained to an increased focus on creating more student-centered learning environments given what KSA participants reportedly observed would help them better serve their students, emotionally, psychologically, and academically.

Discussion
This study took place at only one of the universities in partnership with MoE of the KSA for the goal of redesigning its national education system.

Conclusion
Overall, it appears that participating in this immersion program increased KSA teacher participants' (1) teacher efficacy, (2) program-specific outcomes, and (3)  For research question (2)-How did participating in the program influence KSA teachers' technical competencies as related to program-specific outcomes, including in KSA teachers' English proficiency and by subject area taught?-researchers also found improved teachers' pedagogical, content, technical, and English skills. More specifically, reported recognitions of importance, self-confidence, and knowledge of theory related to program-specific competencies generally increased with trivial or moderate effect size; although, non-English KSA teacher participants' self-confidence slightly decreased.
Observed increases in English proficiency were statistically and practically significant at a moderate level for both English and non-English subject teachers.
For research question (3)-How did participating in the program influence KSA teachers' cross-national educational understandings and mobilization of knowledge and transferability of skills learned?-researchers found enhanced teachers' understandings of education across nations and cultures, with emphasis on the transfer of features of the US educational system back to the KSA (although teachers' were uncertain about the extent to which the transference desired might actually occur, given their desires to adopt foreign education system practices did not increase after program completion, and rather slightly decreased). Given that English-language teachers demonstrated higher overall increases, this possibly indicated that English proficiency may have impacted participants' immersion experiences. Put differently, the extent to which participants knew and understood English seems to have had an interactive impact on that which was experienced by KSA participants throughout this immersion program.
Lastly, through interviews with a handful of KSA teacher participants, researchers Findings confirmed that immersion learning, providing learning-by-doing opportunities, has a critical impact on teachers' pedagogical capacity building, as teacher efficacy and technical confidence yielded statistically significant increases. In addition, this yearlong study-abroad immersion program helped participants gain a more balanced view on their own culture and society. Likewise, survey results showed that participants did not blindly accept the US education system and practices to which they were exposed and in which they were immersed, despite their significantly improved cross-national understandings and English competencies. Their level of intention to mobilize the US education system, in other words, did not necessarily increase with their better crossnational understanding.

Author Biographies
Byoung-gyu Gong, Ph.D., is a data scientist at the Sorenson Impact